Terrak
I was reclining in one of the plush armchairs on Fleet Captain Harlow’s personal vessel, the Darkest Mercy , when the call came in. The ship was a pleasure craft built by one of the shipyards in the Federation of Sol, either bought by the Mentak or captured by their raider fleet. It was the second-nicest ship I’d ever traveled on: there was a chandelier in the galley, a palatial shower (spacious even by my standards), plush carpets, actual beds, and every other conceivable comfort of home and beyond. The ship was also incredibly fast and quiet. It was possible to forget you were on board a spacefaring vessel at all, at least until you looked out a window and saw stars instead of trees or the sea.
The comms chimed pleasantly with an incoming priority call, and I answered from a console in the chair’s arm. “I have the details you requested on the Crystal Stair ,” the message from Catriona said. “I’ll charge it to your account.”
An encrypted data packet downloaded, then unspooled itself across the screen. I pushed the information to Azad’s tablet, highlighting the coordinates of our target ship’s last known location. (Azad was in the library, where there were actual paper books, looking for anything that had dirty pictures in it, probably. On our first day of travel, she told me about her affair and rivalry and partnership with Severyne Dampierre, and now there were dirty pictures etched in my mind. Since I don’t find hairless primates particularly attractive, those were most unwelcome. That’s what I get for finally giving in to my curiosity.)
Harlow had a high degree of certainty that our rogue Letani was on board the Crystal Stair , a two-generations-old Mentak Coalition cruiser that was supposedly decommissioned and sold off. “Ohseroh couldn’t remain on board its original ship, not after going rogue,” Harlow told us. “The Letani managed to keep its crew – an array of the various lifeforms that live on the Arborec home world, all bound together by fungal symbiosis – under its control, but the ship itself was too easy to track by the Arborec. With the help of some loyal puppets I helped Ohseroh recruit, the Letani faked an accident and destroyed the original vessel in a bid to convince the hivemind back home that Ohseroh was dead. We rerouted the Crystal Stair away from its destination in the scrapyard, made sure the relevant paperwork was destroyed, and loaded Ohseroh and its helpers on board. There are a couple of faithful on board, too, a Letnev and a human, in case they ever need faces to present to local authorities. The ship has been cruising around ever since, under independent trader colors, with its movements disguised as much as possible by our confederates, erasing logs and so on. Ohseroh travels back and forth between Mentak Coalition and Barony space, where it has the highest concentration of loyalists and nodes. As it goes, it seeds additional nodes in moons and ships and planets and stations wherever possible. That increases Ohseroh’s range and ability to directly communicate with its adherents. Think of the Crystal Stair as the Letani’s mobile command center.”
“I know you were the key to infiltrating the Coalition, but how did Ohseroh make such progress in the Barony?” I’d asked.
Harlow explained, “I had a double agent among the Letnev back when I ran covert operations, and I was able to set up a meeting so Ohseroh could infect them. From there, the faithful worked their way up through the Barony, almost to the very top.”
Azad wasn’t thrilled with the information. “‘Somewhere in Barony or Coalition space’ isn’t much help when it comes to tracking down a ship, Harlow.”
“I believe I can narrow it down,” I assured her, and so I had. A ship that travels so much needs to be regularly restocked with fuel and supplies, even if most of the crew does consist of plant-creatures, and no one can cover their tracks perfectly. I reached out to Catriona, my data analyst par excellence, who wasn’t at all concerned about my status as a wanted fugitive. She pored over data from the known locations Harlow could provide for the Crystal Stair , and then worked her usual magic. She’d just come through with coordinates: a ship matching the description of the Crystal Stair , with a registered name that proved to be false when Catriona investigated, had been seen yesterday departing the Nicodemidae system. That was in Barony space, not a terribly long journey from Arc Prime itself.
Azad strolled into the lounge and dropped into the chair across from mine. “Looks like Ohseroh is planning to oversee the Legion summit from close range, huh?”
“It makes sense,” I said. “Harlow says the Gashlai are immune to the spores, and the L1Z1X are resistant, so the Legion meeting is more likely to hit snags that need smoothing over.”
“They have no idea what kind of snags they’re in store for,” Azad said. “I’m going to set a course. You start sharpening your claws.”
“I prefer to prevail with sharp wits, as a rule.”
Azad snorted. “Good luck using your charm on an insane mushroom bent on galactic domination.”
“I do love a challenge.” I paused, before deciding to broach something that had been worrying me. “Do you think Harlow’s theory is right? That stopping Ohseroh will free those in its thrall? If not… what happens to a bunch of mind-controlled puppets when there’s no one to pull their strings?”
Azad shrugged. “I’m not an expert or anything, but I remember hearing once that the largest single living organism on Jord is a big mushroom colony. It looks like thousands of individual growths, but underground, it’s all connected by a single mycelium. The Arborec homeworld is bigger than that , and even so, it’s a single symbiotic organism. It’s possible that Ohseroh is connected to all the puppets, and if we kill it, we cut the strings. Otherwise…” She sighed. “We’ll have to inject a lot of spore-zombies with the cure. While they’re being driven insane with grief for their dead god. So. Let’s hope… not that.”